It seems that two companies are going in different directions with the announcement that Warner Bros. Seattle underwent some layoffs, while at the same time Microsoft will open a new development studio in London.

The Warner Bros. studio in Seattle was responsible most recently for Gotham City Imposters and Guardians of Middle-Earth. Warner is spinning it as a staff reduction due to shifting business imperative, which made the decision necessary. Sources tell us that 60 employees were affected by the decision, and this is the second round of layoffs to hit the Seattle studio. The studio is currently working on Lord of the Rings: Guardians of Middle Earth.

Microsoft will strengthen its studio lineup in the UK with the announcement that they will be opening a new development studio in London. The new London studio will join other Microsoft studios in the UK such as Rare and Lionhead.

According to reports, the new Microsoft London studio will be focused on free-to-play titles and the micro transactions areas of the Xbox platform. The official Microsoft comment is that the new studio will be developing successful new programs and services for current and future Xbox customers.

Opening a new studio in the UK will likely be a good one for Microsoft, as the company will have a large and talented pool of resources from which to hire due to all of the studios in the UK that have been closed over the past year or so.

Sources have confirmed to us that Silicon Knights has apparently decided to scale back operations, and as part of this decision the company has let some of its employees go. The decision was made to allow the company to move to a core group focusing all of its efforts on future opportunities.

The interesting part of this is that the company claims that the rumors regarding the developers’ reliance on Nintendo are false. Nintendo is said to have dropped the developer following an unsuccessful bid to prevail in its lawsuit against Epic.

Despite all of the bad news, it is possible that an Eternal Darkness sequel might actually be in the pipeline as no one bothered to deny that this was the case. No numbers have been confirmed as to how many employees were let go, but we hear that it was not a large number.

BioWare Austin, developers of the Star Wars The Old Republic, is undergoing a restructuring, and as a result some lay-offs have been confirmed. Numbers have not yet been announced and no real reason was offered for the lay-offs.

BioWare confirmed that they still have more development ongoing and that the game is growing. Many strong initiatives are planned for the title that are expected to be announced at E3. The MMO will continue and get more development and support in the weeks and months ahead for many years to come, according to BioWare.

EA has stated that some of those being let go in Austin, Texas may move to other EA projects, while others will leave the company. So far, EA has not commented if the drop in subscribers from 1.7 million to 1.3 million is part of the reason for this move; but it certainly does not help matters, from where we sit.

Bethesda Softworks, the parent company of id Software, has confirmed that a number of id Software employees were shown the door. Bethesda claims that this is a normal part of the company’s evaluation of staffing levels to make sure that the studio is staffed to meet current projects. Bethesda did not confirm how many were affected by the layoff and if any additional layoffs were coming.

Bethesda claims that it is still recruiting and hiring qualified developers for id Software. Bethesda was very careful to note that work on future id titles continues, despite the layoffs. The studio is currently working on Doom 4, which is the next chapter in the studio’s long running franchise.

It is unknown if talk over id’s latest release, Rage, played any role in the layoff decisions. While Rage didn’t sell quite as well as id expected, many in the media were very harsh on the title, citing a number of shortcomings in its development and game play. Expect to hear more about this as things settle in the weeks ahead.

Bungie has issued a statement that the suggestion that Activision ordered some sort of layoffs at the developer is false. Rumors claim that this is not the case and contractors were let go for no reason; and, in fact, a rumored Email indicated that it was due to “project sensitivity” and “budgetary concerns from our publisher” and this is something that Bungie is clearly refuting in their statement.

While the rumor talk rages on, Bungie went on to say that it would confirm that almost 200 would be employed to work on the new multiplatform project that Activision is apparently funding. This seems to be where the rub is in all of these rumors, as Activision-Blizzard has admitted that they are funding the project. Some suggest that while the company has been belt tightening in other areas and cutting staff, it seems that despite what Bungie might say publicly they will certainly exert some budgetary control of the project.

Actually, we find it very unique that Bungie would feel so compelled to jump into this fray and feel the need to discredit the layoffs. In fact, Bungie posted on Bungie.Net an additional clarification of the issued statement saying, “Bungie has not experienced any layoffs or group firings of any kind,” and beyond this fact the studio provided a link to its jobs section as evidence that it is actually in hiring mode.

It is really difficult to what to make of all of this; but we doubt that it will really impact the new project that they are working on, and think it is more of a matter of public perception than anything else. We expect this story to slip away and not continue to make news if Bungie opts not to issue any additional statements, but it is doubtful that we will ever know the entire truth of what happened.